L.A. Murder Rate Rises 6 Percent

Published 12:52 pm, Monday, April 25, 2016

There was a 6 percent increase in Los Angeles homicides last year, most of them occurring in urban neighborhoods and involving black and Hispanic males, police statistics show.

The numbers released Tuesday show that 584 people were killed in the city in 2001, compared with 551 slayings a year earlier.

Most of last year's victims were blacks or Hispanics in their late teens and early 20s. Most of the violence was tied to drugs or gangs.

"It's the kind of violence that we saw emerging in the late 1980s and early 1990s, involving street narcotics and sales coupled with gang activity," Capt. Jim Tatreau said. "It also portends a significant challenge for the city to avoid returning to the level of violence we had a decade ago."

The highest number of homicides in the nation's second-largest city was 1,096 in 1992. A 30-year low was reached in 1999, when 425 people were killed.